


Son of None

by BeesKnees



Category: Sands of Arawiya - Hafsah Faizal, We Hunt the Flame
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21740611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeesKnees/pseuds/BeesKnees
Summary: Because she must tell the truth, it is not a lie when Anadil tells Nasir that he is her life, that she did not know the truest of loves until she held him in her arms. Because she has mastered deception in spite of truth, she need not say the opposite: Altair was not a baby born of love and happiness.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Son of None

Because she must tell the truth, it is not a lie when Anadil tells Nasir that he is her life, that she did not know the truest of loves until she held him in her arms. Because she has mastered deception in spite of truth, she need not say the opposite: Altair was not a baby born of love and happiness.

Her golden son is born of the treachery of her heart and his father's deceit. 

Anadil does not realize she is pregnant for a long time with Altair. Making a child is no small task for a Sister of Old. His first flutterings were ignored in favor of scheming and obsession. While she listens to the Lion's poison, Altair develops fine-tipped ears. While she dreams dark dreams of luring her sisters back, Altair joins her. While she plays at a charade of love, she lies to the baby growing inside of her.

Her sisters know when they return to Sharr, though, and that is perhaps the first sign that something is wrong: Anadil's heart is no longer true and her body betrays where her new allegiance lies. 

She wonders: Would they have been less merciful if they hadn't been aware of the baby? Would they have hesitated less? Or was that simply the strength of their love for her? She thinks it's probably the latter, because she knows of her love for her sisters. But she will never know. She will never get to ask her sisters what their last thoughts were, just as she will never introduce either of her sons to their aunts. Her penance is unending. 

When she flees Sharr, shamed and scared and more alone than she has ever been, there is only Altair. By then, she can't ignore him. He is too present, too alive inside of her. She tries to unmake him, just the once, but even then he is stubborn. He tells her that he will live, that he will be good, that he will be light incarnate. He does not have words yet and he does not lie, but Anadil will never stop fearing him. 

The Lion knows that she has taken their son. She is her most motherly, oddly, when she thinks of him. Perhaps, even despite her sisters, she would yield and return to him and Sharr if it weren't for Altair. The loneliness is biting and cold. But she doesn't want to hand another living being over to the Lion, and she knows that he would eat Altair whole the way he does with everyone. 

It's easier when she has an entire kingdom to protect. She is able to be consumed by the job, to be able to tell herself that this is the closest she came to justice. She wronged her sisters and she wronged the land, but she's protecting everyone and everything else. She will fix this. 

She is glad to hand Altair off. It is another thing that will remain unsaid, but it doesn't matter. It's known anyway, especially by Altair. 

He comes into the world quiet with wandering, wide eyes. Anadil is afraid to look at him, to see what shape her monstrous sins have taken. It is astonishing that he can be so beautiful: lightly burnished skin, wisps of light hair, and watchful blue eyes. He smiles in delight when people talk to him and can be left on his own for large swaths of time. Still, Anadil cannot bring herself to reach for him. He must know even then. He rarely cries for her and is comforted by anyone who will hold him.

Anadil wishes that she could bring herself to send him far away. Likely, it would bring a happier life for him. But she knows the Lion will watch for him, and while she cannot love this son, she will not abandon him to his father. That is the only promise that she makes her firstborn. She doesn't think it will be enough, but she isn't capable of anything more.

The Lion will scour the shadows for any news of them, she knows. She will have to give him little to feed off of when it comes to Altair.

She gives him no family, she gives him no land, and she gives him no home. Everything is carefully choreographed deceit when it comes to Altair. It is not a life made for happiness. 

She waits for the dark in his heart to rear its head. She looks for it constantly, for the shattering of the light of Altair's facade. In his laughter, she looks for when he might be playing false – when he might be laughing at something that causes another pain. But as he promised her before, he is light incarnate. She knows he is lonely, but he finds his place as he is moved from home to home. She knows that, for a while, he hopes to remain in Alderamin, that he has found happiness in the Haadi household. Benyamin is a good influence on him.

But still. Anadil fears. 

As he finishes growing, she can see the neat duality to him. He knows that she does not love him and it hurts him even though it has been a truth all of his life. But he refuses to show that pain to her because he knows that she seeks anything that might turn him dark. He cannot bear that, so he is nothing but smiles and charms, patience sometimes wearing thin. It is easy in some ways that he prefers not to be around her, because he knows how her mind works when it comes to him: If he is too kind, it is manipulative. If he is too smart, it is because he has his father's cunning. If he is too patient, it is because he is too deceptive. Any talent is twisted into excess. 

Ghameq quiets so much of that turbulence inside of her. It is one of the ways that she knows that this is love and not a shadow counterpoint. Ghameq does not seek to cover up her flaws. He helps her know they are there. He helps her know they can deal with them together. 

She tells him about Altair early on, and Ghameq tries to help bridge that chasm. He brings Altair forward as a general, keeps his counsel. Altair is, unsurprisingly, brilliant. He makes a name for himself, because he has no other to claim: Altair Al-Badawi. 

He is hesitant around Ghameq, but he is also devoted to making himself a home. So he stays, her golden son. He works. 

He becomes the older and unknown brother of the crown prince. 

Her sweet Nasir, the center of her life. Her purpose for being. Dark Nasir who, as a baby, reminded her of Altair only in that he had the same wandering eyes. Oh, how she loved to hold him, to feel the way he still felt a part of her even after he was born. 

Her fear of Altair takes on a new cadence, one that is relative to her love for Nasir. 

He is one of the first to hold the new crown prince although no one will ever know. Altair takes Nasir into the crook of his arm and examines the softly cooing baby. He does not smile then, not as he will later on when there are toasts in the prince's name and parties across the kingdom. There is no facade in this moment, but Anadil realizes that she doesn't know what that means. She has spent years and years studying Altair but she has never entirely understood him.

What she does know is the extent of how she has failed him. Anadil has always known that to be true. But the feelings that Nasir inspires in her emphasize what wasn't there for Altair. Of what will never be there for Altair. The most she can do is – the most she has ever done – is to hide him from his father. Nasir will have everything else: her love, a family, their home. She will train him to be strong and be proud of him for it; she will not fear what his strength could turn him into. 

She wishes she could know what Altair thinks of Nasir besides that curling jealousy that must surely be there somewhere. She is saddened that she cannot give her sons what she had with her sisters, but then-- But then that didn't end well at all, so maybe it doesn't matter. But her heart knows that is a lie that she is telling herself because she still cries for her sisters every night and for the role that she played in their demise.

“He is lovely,” Altair says as he hands Nasir back. Anadil holds him close. 

“Altair,” she tries to say. But after speaking his name, no more words come. No apology for the fact that she cannot love him because they do not admit that she cannot love him. No apology for the fact that he will never be recognized as her son while Nasir will gain a kingdom because of it. 

“Sultana,” Altair says with a bow of his head, releasing her of the need to finish the sentence. He walks out of the room. 

There is a discussion, just once, about telling Nasir and Nasir alone that Altair is actually his brother – so that they may grow up to be close, so that Nasir can learn from Altair. But, as ever, the fear in Anadil's heart wins out. She and Ghameq keep her secret. Nasir never knows. 

Everything unravels relatively quickly after that. She wants to protest that it's not fair that she has so little time with the happiness and love of the family that she has made. But there is no one to protest to. And even if there were, they would likely laugh at her. She destroyed her last family. Perhaps it is only right that this one is taken from her. 

She executes her plan with desperate thoughtfulness. She quakes with fear at leaving Nasir alone, whose soul is wavering. Who is still so young and has so much hardship ahead of him. Who will be so isolated.

She knows it is too late for anything real between her sons. She knows that pain has grown inside Altair's ribcage, even if she doesn't know the genus of the plant. And she begs him all the same. She tells him that she is going. She tells him of his father's growing strength. His hands clasped in hers, she asks him to watch over Nasir the best that he can. 

What a moment this could have been for the son of the Lion of the Night. How he could have gloated: how her own schemes had come back to haunt her. How her perfect son started to linger in shadows. How her husband's heart started to waver. How, she, herself has returned to such solitude. 

And there is doubt in Altair's eyes. She sees it. There is pain and anger and all the things that he has kept sewn inside of himself. The things he will never say and they will never discuss because they so rarely acknowledge that they are mother and son even if that relationship has defined everything in Altair's life. He is jealous of his little brother. 

And still he agrees. Still, he presses a kiss to her forehead. 

“Be at peace,” he tells her. “I will do what I can for him.” 

She is not so proud that she cannot admit that this is when she should have relented. Even if she hadn't told Nasir the entire story, she should have left him with an older brother. But it just seemed so complicated then and she had never expected things to go so wrong with Ghameq. But the distance she put between Nasir and Altair is maintained after she departs, leaving the amount of influence Altair can have on Nasir at little. 

It is a wonder and a terror when they are sent to Sharr together. Her older son's father in the heart of her younger son's father. A poison coursing through the veins of her family, ensnaring Nasir in the way she expected Altair to be. Marking Altair as another death to be used against her. She isn't sure which she is more afraid of meeting the Lion. 

But fate brings them all back together, her two sons – light incarnate and darkness incarnate. The son of the treason of her heart and the son of her true heart. There is no trust between them and certainly no love. 

But all the love and trust in the world wasn't enough for her and her sisters. Her sons have something else. Something that is beyond her comprehension and planning. 

When she sees Altair square off against the Lion, it is a profound moment. She has searched long and hard for him in Altair. And while she has never found him, it is all the more moving to see them paired against each other. Truly, he isn't _there_. But neither is she. There's no evidence at all that Altair is a child of theirs. Instead, it is as he has simply willed himself into being, willed himself into his light and humor and strength. 

The world will follow suit, Anadil believes. 

It was wrecked by hers and the Lion's will. But it too can survive them.


End file.
